


Situations (Are Irrelevant Now)

by ViciousRhythm



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Kylo is not as scary as he seems, Rey does not know how to do social situations, from another tumblr post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:20:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6589165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViciousRhythm/pseuds/ViciousRhythm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey encounters a very tall, very intimidating stranger in the elevator and proceeds to make enough of a fool of herself that he's actually nice about it. That's somehow even worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Situations (Are Irrelevant Now)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by tumblr confessions of real life failures. Also TheJGatsby's fault for goading me into writing it.

The tour of the building has been great so far, Rey thinks, standing in front of the elevator. It’s within her price range and the apartment she has her eye on looks clean and just spacious enough for her alone, and they even have laundry services in the building and nearby bus stops. She’s already resolved to sign the lease, honestly, she just needs to call Poe and Finn and make sure everything’s in order for her to move out. It’s been great living with them, but they deserve a chance to start married life without Rey there to witness it from the guest room.

She’s got a smile on her face as the elevator doors open, but it slips a bit when she turns to face the doors from inside the elevator and sees the man walking in after her. He’s massive, at least a couple inches over six feet, broad and solid with a mass of dark hair and ink crawling from his wrist up under the sleeves of his black t-shirt. The English bulldog he’s walking on a chain leash is massive as well, brown-red and white and panting.

Rey stands up straight and stares hard at the wall with lit up numbers instead of risking catching the man’s eye as the doors slide shut. Rey only comes up to his shoulder. She catches the ring of skulls tattooed around his wrist out of the corner of her eye, along with scarred knuckles wrapped around the dog’s leash. She sees him reach past her, spine stiff and holding her breath as he presses the button for the lobby. Rey had forgotten to do it the second she saw him.

Her hand is wrapped tight around the strap of her purse and Rey is actively resisting the urge to slip her fingers over the knife she’d bought when she’d first moved to the city when his deep voice snaps out, curt and authoritative.

“Sit down.”

Without thinking, Rey obeys, dropping to the floor and scooting her back up against the back wall of the elevator. At the same time, the dog drops onto its behind as well, and the man startles. She realizes what’s happened about the same time he does, judging by his puzzled and then embarrassed expression. With that face, he looks much less intimidating with the tips of his ears turning red.

“Not….” He trails off, gaze flitting from Rey to the dog sitting obediently at his feet. “Not you.”

“Oh no,” Rey starts, denying before she’s come up with a good excuse for why she just _sat_ when some stranger was telling his _dog_ to do so. “No, I…uh. My legs are. Very tired.”

“Right,” he says after a beat of silence, the elevator softly pinging its descent. Rey keeps her eyes trained deliberately on the floor, tucking her knees up to her chest and trying not to combust from sheer embarrassment. One more floor goes by in utter silence before the dog tips its head toward her, snuffling.

“Leave it,” the man orders, and Rey blessedly doesn’t react to that at all, though the dog obediently faces forward, making a bit of noise as it resettles. “Sorry,” he goes on, not looking at her. “He doesn’t have the best manners.”

“It’s fine,” Rey says, voice small and a bit tight still. The rest of the trip is entirely composed of tense quiet, Rey determinedly staying where she is on the floor while the guy shuffles his feet a little and the dog pants gently. When they hit the lobby, Rey scrambles to get up so fast she stumbles, and then there’s a hand around her elbow, steadying her. He has a heart with ‘Mom’ written inside it inked in the space between his fingers and thumb, Rey notes distantly when she looks down in shock at his hand on her.

“You alright?” he asks. He looks genuinely concerned when Rey meets his eye, a chagrined tilt to his mouth. Rey would have called his eyes black from the tiny glimpse she’d seen in the hall, but from this distance they’re a warm brown under surprisingly neat brows. His hair is falling in his face a little as he’s leaned down to help her catch her balance.

“Yeah,” Rey says, horrified with herself and her inability to behave like a functional human being. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.”

He lets her push down against his steadying hand for the moment it takes to stand – successfully this time. Rey charges out of the elevator at speed, leaving behind the man and his dog, and she only glances back for a second to see him looking bemused. It’s entirely possible she can’t live here after all. Rey’s humiliated herself in more spectacular fashion than she could have ever dreamed, and she may blush herself to death if she runs into the man ever again.

-

“And now I can never go back,” Rey concludes, fallen dramatically over the couch at home. Finn doesn’t look terribly impressed with her dramatics, more amused that’d she’d actually obeyed an order to sit. In real life. To be fair, Rey still can’t believe she did it either.

“I think you’re overreacting,” Finn says gently. “It sounds like this guy was just as embarrassed as you, and what are the chances you’d even see him again. We never see our neighbors.”

“This is a real house, Finn,” Rey points out, totally reasonably. “That’s an apartment building, with one elevator. It was such a nice apartment, too.”

“Well, you can always just stay here,” Poe says, wandering in from the kitchen with a bag of Cheetos. “We’re not gonna kick you out. You’ll just have to deal with the honeymoon phase.”

Rey rolls her eyes at him from the couch, while Poe leans in to nuzzle Finn. He hates getting cheeto dust on his mouth, though Poe has a deep fondness for the radioactive snacks.

“Like you two could get any sappier,” she mumbles before returning to her regularly scheduled whining. “Where am I gonna find another apartment? This one was perfect, Poe.”

“I think you should fight this guy for the right to live there,” Poe says, hopefully sarcastic but entirely unhelpful. “Clearly only one of you can stick around.” He plops down on the couch in the approximately three inches that Rey isn’t taking up, wiggling his ass until Rey gives in and lifts her feet so he can sit properly.

“I think he’d kick my ass, guys,” Rey says mournfully. “Did I mention the tattoos? There were so many of them.”

Poe and Finn share a look that Rey can’t decipher, clearly speaking in that couples’ eyebrow language. She ignores them, dwelling on the mystery guy some more instead. He was probably only seeming nice because Rey had managed to make such a fool of herself as to inspire pity from badass strangers. She thinks wistfully of the well-lit third floor laundry room and the nice older woman who ran the front office and waves it all a fond mental farewell.

She’s being overdramatic, of course, and Rey eventually admits that maybe it wouldn’t actually kill her to bump into the guy again. It’s unlikely she’ll find an apartment she likes as much, and certain not on short notice and within her price range, so Rey sucks up her pride and signs the lease. She moves in a few weeks before the wedding, and it isn’t until after Poe and Finn have returned from Costa Rica that she sees the guy again. He must have a sixth sense for when she’s done or about to do something stupid, because Rey is sitting in front of her door waiting for the superintendent to show up and unlock it for her when he walks by.

Against all of Rey’s frantic prayers, he does a double take instead of walking past her, but to be fair, those prayers were about fifty percent cursing, so she can understand why a higher power might ignore them. Rey tries very hard to look composed where she’d camped out in front of her apartment, but she can feel her face getting hot.

“So,” he drawls, stopped in the middle of the hallway with his colorful hands in the pockets of his black jeans. “Your legs still tired?”

“Ha ha,” Rey bites out, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin, lest he actually live up to the reputation his black clothes and broad frame and scrawls of ink have built for him. “You’re very funny. I’m locked out of my apartment, the super should be here soon.”

“Yeah,” he says, dragging the word out into an uncertain noise as he looks back over his shoulder like the superintendent is somewhere behind him. “You might be there a while. Maz is off-duty this late and Plutt takes about a century to do anything.”

Rey groans, from somewhere deep in her chest, letting her head fall back against the door. By some grace, she doesn’t actually have work in the morning, but it’s already almost eleven at night, and she was looking forward to catching up on some much needed sleep tonight. But no, she had to lose her key, and Rey is bitterly grateful she’d at least managed to scoop the contents of her upturned purse back into place before this guy had shown up. Sitting forlornly outside her apartment is one thing, but being surrounded by the innards of her gutted purse would’ve been another layer of embarrassment Rey decidedly does not need.

He’s still standing there uncertainly, hands in his pockets, when Rey tips her head back to its usually orientation instead of languishing against the door. All six and a half feet of him, broad and solid and staring at her. Rey starts pulling her feet in closer to herself instinctively before his posture changes, shifting from almost militaristic with a straight back and planted feet to something more casual. One of his hands retreats from his pocket to push through his hair in what has to be a nervous habit.

“Do you, uh,” he starts, almost swallowing his words. “You could wait inside, if you don’t wanna sit out here in the hall. In my apartment, I mean.”

Rey gives him a suspicious once over, and his shoulders hunch. It’s a shockingly endearing move, the way it completely fails to make him look any smaller than he is. He just looks clumsy that way, the weird self-consciousness he exudes at odds with his dark colors and harsh lines. It matches the gentle sweep of his jawline and the soft mouth Rey hadn’t noticed before.

“Sorry,” he goes on before Rey can respond. “That probably sounds really sketchy. ‘Hey, I don’t even know who the hell you are, but come into my apartment in the dead of night.’ Jesus.”

“Well, Rey says, considering. “You could introduce yourself, and then I’d actually know who the hell you are.”

“Kylo Ren.” He sticks his hand out, and Rey takes it, not to shake but to use to leverage herself into standing. She can still barely see over his shoulders, even with him slouching like he is. There’s another tattoo on the side of his neck, disappearing into his shirt, and Rey wonders idly just how much of his body is covered in ink.

“What kind of name is that?” she says, completely unable to stop herself.

“Mine,” he shoots back, frowning a bit. With his mouth, Rey would almost call it pouting, though she’s certain it isn’t on purpose.

“I’m Rey.” She does shake his hand now, where it sits still held in hers. He’s got a good handshake, firm without trying the alpha male bullshit of having a grip that’s asking for a fight. “I suppose if I know who you are, I can accept your invitation. I…really don’t want to sit on the floor for hours.”

“I thought you liked sitting,” he says, smirking like a total jackass. Rey punches him in the arm before she thinks better of it, and his face drops in surprise before what looks like sheer delight overtakes his features. “Come on, I have chairs you can sit on instead.”

He does, in fact, have chairs, and even a couch, which is where they both end up sitting when they get to his door another dozen feet and one left turn down the hall. Kylo apparently doesn’t have anything to drink besides water and beer, and Rey is already being adventurous just sitting on his couch, so she takes the water when offered. There are a few minutes of awkward small talk – Rey insists it’s fine if he wants to go to sleep and he insists on staying up with her until Plutt gets his lazy ass to their floor. When she asks about the dog he’d had before, he goes on a small rant about his friend Hux who sounds less like a friend and more like a close enemy, and the dog he’d paid Kylo to take care of for the week. Turns out he doesn’t much care for dogs, being more of a cat person.

She doesn’t even notice how much time has passed with them just chatting together until Rey glances at the clock on his DVD player and sees it’s tipped past midnight somehow.

“Oh my god,” she blurts out in the middle of him speaking. “Sorry, I just- When did it get that late?”

“Oh,” Kylo winces when he checks the time himself. “Hate to break it to you, but chances are you’re gonna have to wait until Maz gets in to unlock your door. Plutt would’ve called you bitching about it by now if he was going to actually show up.”

“You’re kidding me.” Rey sets aside her glass to free up her hands so she can bury her face in them, making frustrated noises. “I don’t suppose you’d find it in the goodness of your heart to let me crash on your couch?” she asks, face still covered by her palms.

“I mean, that’s - ” he breaks off when his voice does a funny little stumble for some reason. “That’d be fine by me. I’m not gonna leave you camping out in the hallway.”

He’s a good guy, Rey decides then and there. By the look of him, she would never have guessed it, but having chatted for over an hour, in light of him offering not just his company but a place to sleep for the night without knowing much about her, Rey decides Kylo is at least decent. Maybe she’ll figure out one day why his default expression seems to be a scowl and how his voice got so good at barking orders, but while she’s a little tired and very much done with her day as a whole, Rey likes him anyway.

He fidgets a little, glancing between his couch and the door to his bedroom as he helps set her up with pillows and blankets on the couch. Rey has a feeling he’s debating offering her the bed, but that’s too much, too intimate for someone she only exchanged names with a couple hours ago, so Rey tugs off her shoes and lays down under the blankets before he can talk himself into saying anything. He leaves with a quiet ‘goodnight’ and Rey can’t help but stay awake for a few more minutes listening to him go through the motions of getting ready for bed himself. The lights are turned off in the living room already, but against the light of the bathroom, Rey gets a glimpse of him pulling off his shirt as he walks into his bedroom. She turns around very abruptly to face the back of the couch and tells herself that’s quite enough blushing for one day and essentially forces herself to sleep.

In the morning, Rey rolls off the couch because she was not expecting to wake up on a couch and probably because it’s her fate to do humiliating things whenever she’s within a twenty-foot radius of Kylo. She accepts her fate for a few moments, lying on the floor and staring at an almost-familiar ceiling before getting to her feet. It’s still horrendously early, not even past eight yet, but Rey is fairly certain she won’t be able to get back to sleep. Maz clocks in around eight anyway, so she should be able to fetch a key from the front office by now.

She has another glass of water before leaving and dawdles just a tiny bit. Kylo clearly isn’t awake yet, judging by the lack of his presence and the very faint sounds of snoring coming from his bedroom. He’s less snoring and more breathing heavily, she thinks when she peaks in with a pad of paper and pencil in hand. Rey feels like a creep walking into his bedroom while he’s still asleep, but she’d feel much worse waking him and it seems rude not to leave a note at least. She scrawls one out in the doorway, tiptoeing to his nightstand to leave it where he’ll hopefully see.

He’s nearly spread eagle in bed, covers pushed around like he sleeps messy. They only come up to his ribs, so Rey can see the portion of his tattoos that cover his shoulders in the weak morning light filtering through his curtains. His arms are absolutely covered in a mish-mash of images, American traditional designs down one arm and an intricate biomechanical design taking up the opposite bicep and most of his arm before it descends into more abstract black and grey lines. There’s a big piece across his shoulders, wings with the tips just brushing under his arms and over his shoulders so they don’t interrupt the rest of the work. Below that looks like it might be a portrait on his left side and maybe scrolled writing on his right. In the half light and blocked by the sheets, Rey can’t really tell and when she catches herself trying to puzzle it out, she forces herself to stop.

Instead of standing around staring at his back, Rey drops her note and the pencil and turns to go. She’s at the door, hand on the doorknob when she pauses, bottom lip between her teeth. It’s silly, and unnecessary, but she goes back into his room, picks up the pencil and hastily jots down her phone number right under her _Thanks!_ He can do with that what he wants, Rey thinks decisively, marching down to the front office. She isn’t even going to think about it, he probably won’t bother her anyway.

Maz is deeply apologetic when Rey tells her what happened, and of course hands her a new copy of her key, waving her off when Rey tries to pay the usual fee for it. “For your troubles,” she says, smiling apologetically. It’s Rey’s day off and so she spends it puttering around her apartment after she’d made herself go to the hardware store and make two more copies of her key just in case. She’s flipping through channels when there’s a knock on the door.

It’s Kylo, and Rey wishes she could say she wasn’t hoping it was him. He looks as though he’s confused to find himself standing in her doorway, but he clears his throat before speaking anyway, brandishing a small piece of paper that can only be her note.

“Why would I bother calling you if you live right down the hall?”

“Well,” Rey starts in a lofty voice. “You certainly don’t have to call me. I don’t think I even asked you to.”

“It was implied,” Kylo says, his tone equally defensive. Still, for all his pseudo-self-assurance, he stands there shifting from foot to foot when Rey doesn’t say anything more. He opens his mouth after a handful of seconds, and Rey cuts him off before she loses her nerve.

“Would you like to come in?” she blurts. “I was…just going to start a movie or something. But if you’re not busy.”

Kylo smiles, slow and awkward like he’s not quite used to it, and shoves her note into his back pocket before accepting her invitation. “I’m really not.”


End file.
